The Rangers, undeniably, have plenty of problems.
Immaturity, however, is not one of them — according to John Tortorella.
A day after team captain Chris Drury cited “immaturity” as the root of the Blueshirts’ inconsistency in the wake of their critical loss to Montreal on Tuesday, the coach said he disagreed.
“I think that’s the wrong word to use by [Drury],” Tortorella said following a short practice in advance of tonight’s game against St. Louis at the Garden (7:00; MSG, ESPN 1050 AM). “We’ve ironed that out in the locker room.”
When asked what language he would use to describe the team’s woes, Tortorella responded: “I have some words but not for you.”
The coach is also not done tinkering with lines in hopes of getting some more production from the Blueshirts’ top players. Yesterday, he broke up Vinny Prospal and Marian Gaborik, placing Gaborik on the top line with Brandon Dubinsky and Erik Christensen, while Prospal played with Artem Anisimov-Ryan Callahan.
Tortorella admitted that it was frustrating still to be rearranging personnel this late in the season, but he knows even that won’t be what really gets the team fixed.
“[Gaborik’s] gotta get himself going,” said Tortorella, adding: “But that’s a crowded bus. You can’t point fingers at one, two or three guys.”
No, it’s pretty clearly more widespread than that on a team that has been unable to move up the standings in the mediocre Eastern Conference.
“Hopefully we know what we have to do,” Henrik Lundqvist said. “It’s been weird. Some games you think you’ve figured it out. We take two steps in the right direction and then come back to square one again. It’s been our problem the whole year, consistency. Hopefully it gets better the last 12 games.”
If it doesn’t, those will be the last dozen games of the season.
“We’re right there, but we don’t have much time left,” Lundqvist said.